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The Pleasures of Life

S >> Sir John Lubbock >> The Pleasures of Life




"A cultivated mind," says Mill--"I do not mean that of a philosopher, but
any mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which
has been taught in any tolerable degree to exercise its faculties--will
find sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it; in the
objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry,
the incidents of history, the ways of mankind, past and present, and their
prospects in the future. It is possible, indeed, to become indifferent to
all this, and that too without having exhausted a thousandth part of it;
but only when one has had from the beginning no moral or human interest in
these things, and has sought in them only the gratification of curiosity."

I have been subjected to some good-natured banter for having said that I
looked forward to a time when our artisans and mechanics would be great
readers. But it is surely not unreasonable to regard our social condition
as susceptible of great improvement. The spread of schools, the cheapness
of books, the establishment of free libraries will, it may be hoped,
exercise a civilizing and ennobling influence. They will even, I believe,
do much to diminish poverty and suffering, so much of which is due to
ignorance and to the want of interest and brightness in uneducated life.
So far as our elementary schools are concerned, there is no doubt much
difficulty in apportioning the National Grant without unduly stimulating
mere mechanical instruction. But this is not the place to discuss the
subject of religious or moral training, or the system of apportioning the
grant.

If we succeed in giving the love of learning, the learning itself is sure
to follow.

We should therefore endeavor to educate our children so that every country
walk may be a pleasure; that the discoveries of science may be a living
interest; that our national history and poetry may be sources of
legitimate pride and rational enjoyment. In short, our schools, if they
are to be worthy of the name--if they are to fulfil their high
function--must be something more than mere places of dry study; they must
train the children educated in them so that they may be able to appreciate
and enjoy those intellectual gifts which might be, and ought to be, a
source of interest and of happiness, alike to the high and to the low, to
the rich and to the poor.

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet
knows, how much he has still to learn; it will enable us to realize that
those who complain of the tiresome monotony of life have only themselves
to blame; and that knowledge is pleasure as well as power. It will lead us
all to try with Milton "to behold the bright countenance of truth in the
quiet and still air of study," and to feel with Bacon that "no pleasure is
comparable is the standing upon the vantage ground of truth."

We should then indeed realize in part, for as yet we cannot do so fully,
the "sacred trusts of health, strength, and time," and how thankful we
ought to be for the inestimable gift of life.

[1] Bacon.

[2] Goethe.

[3] Bacon.


END OF PART I.






THE PLEASURES OF LIFE.

PART II.






PREFACE


"And what is writ is writ--
Would it were worthier."

BYRON.


Herewith I launch the conclusion of my subject. Perhaps I am unwise in
publishing a second part. The first was so kindly received that I am
running a risk in attempting to add to it.

In the preface, however, to the first part I have expressed the hope that
the thoughts and quotations in which I have found most comfort and
delight, might be of use to others also.

In this my most sanguine hopes have been more than realized. Not only has
the book passed through thirteen editions in less than two years, but the
many letters which I have received have been most gratifying.

Two criticisms have been repeated by several of those who have done me the
honor of noticing my previous volume. It has been said in the first place
that my life has been exceptionally bright and full, and that I cannot
therefore judge for others. Nor do I attempt to do so. I do not forget, I
hope I am not ungrateful for, all that has been bestowed on me. But if I
have been greatly favored, ought I not to be on that very account
especially qualified to write on such a theme? Moreover, I have had,--who
has not,--my own sorrows.

Again, some have complained that there is too much quotation--too little
of my own. This I take to be in reality a great compliment. I have not
striven to be original.

If, as I have been assured by many, my book have proved a comfort, and
have been able to cheer in the hour of darkness, that is indeed an ample
reward, and is the utmost I have ever hoped.

HIGH ELMS, DOWN,

KENT, _April 1889_.




CHAPTER I.

AMBITION.


"Fame is the spur that the clear spirit doth raise
(That last infirmity of noble minds)
To scorn delights and live laborious days."

MILTON.




CHAPTER I.

AMBITION.


If fame be the last infirmity of noble minds, ambition is often the first;
though, when properly directed, it may be no feeble aid to virtue.

Had not my youthful mind, says Cicero, "from many precepts, from many
writings, drunk in this truth, that glory and virtue ought to be the
darling, nay, the only wish in life; that, to attain these, the torments
of the flesh, with the perils of death and exile, are to be despised;
never had I exposed my person in so many encounters, and to these daily
conflicts with the worst of men, for your deliverance. But, on this head,
books are full; the voice of the wise is full; the examples of antiquity
are full: and all these the night of barbarism had still enveloped, had it
not been enlightened by the sun of science."

The poet tells us that

"The many fail: the one succeeds." [1]

But this is scarcely true. All succeed who deserve, though not perhaps as
they hoped. An honorable defeat is better than a mean victory, and no one
is really the worse for being beaten, unless he loses heart. Though we may
not be able to attain, that is no reason why we should not aspire.

I know, says Morris,

"How far high failure overleaps the bound
Of low successes."

And Bacon assures us that "if a man look sharp and attentively he shall
see fortune; for though she is blind, she is not invisible."

To give ourselves a reasonable prospect of success we must realize what we
hope to achieve; and then make the most of our opportunities. Of these the
use of time is one of the most important. What have we to do with time,
asks Oliver Wendell Holmes, but to fill it up with labor.

"At the battle of Montebello," said Napoleon, "I ordered Kellermann to
attack with 800 horse, and with these he separated the 6000 Hungarian
grenadiers before the very eyes of the Austrian cavalry. This cavalry was
half a league off, and required a quarter of an hour to arrive on the
field of action; and I have observed that it is always these quarters of
an hour that decide the fate of a battle," including, we may add, the
battle of life.

Nor must we spare ourselves in other ways, for

"He who thinks in strife
To earn a deathless fame, must do, nor ever care for life." [2]

In the excitement of the struggle, moreover, he will suffer comparatively
little from wounds and blows which would otherwise cause intense
suffering.

It is well to weigh scrupulously the object in view, to run as little risk
as may be, to count the cost with care.

But when the mind is once made up, there must be no looking back, you must
spare yourself no labor, nor shrink from danger.

"He either fears his fate too much
Or his deserts are small,
That dares not put it to the touch
To gain or lose it all." [3]

Glory, says Renan, "is after all the thing which has the best chance of
not being altogether vanity." But what is glory?

Marcus Aurelius observes that "a spider is proud when it has caught a fly,
a man when he has caught a hare, another when he has taken a little fish
in a net, another when he has taken wild boars, another when he has taken
bears, and another when he has taken Sarmatians;" [4] but this, if from
one point of view it shows the vanity of fame, also encourages us with the
evidence that every one may succeed if his objects are but reasonable.

Alexander may be taken as almost a type of Ambition in its usual form,
though carried to an extreme.

His desire was to conquer, not to inherit or to rule. When news was
brought that his father Philip had taken some town, or won some battle,
instead of appearing delighted with it, he used to say to his companions,
"My father will go on conquering, till there be nothing extraordinary left
for you and me to do." [5] He is said even to have been mortified at the
number of the stars, considering that he had not been able to conquer one
world. Such ambition is justly foredoomed to disappointment.

The remarks of Philosophers on the vanity of ambition refer generally to
that unworthy form of which Alexander may be taken as the type--the idea
of self-exaltation, not only without any reference to the happiness, but
even regardless of the sufferings, of others.

"A continual and restless search after fortune," says Bacon, "takes up too
much of their time who have nobler things to observe." Indeed he elsewhere
extends this, and adds, "No man's private fortune can be an end any way
worthy of his existence."

Goethe well observes that man "exists for culture; not for what he can
accomplish, but for what can be accomplished in him." [6]

As regards fame we must not confuse name and essence. To be remembered is
not necessarily to be famous. There is infamy as well as fame; and
unhappily almost as many are remembered for the one as for the other, and
not a few for the mixture of both.

Who would not rather be forgotten, than recollected as Ahab or Jezebel,
Nero or Commodus, Messalina or Heliogabalus, King John or Richard III.?

"To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The
Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name than Herodias with
one; and who would not rather have been the good thief than Pilate?" [7]

Kings and Generals are often remembered as much for their deaths as for
their lives, for their misfortunes as for their successes. The Hero of
Thermopylae was Leonidas, not Xerxes. Alexander's Empire fell to pieces at
his death. Napoleon was a great genius, though no Hero. But what came of
all his victories? They passed away like the smoke of his guns, and he
left France weaker, poorer, and smaller than he found her. The most
lasting result of his genius is no military glory, but the Code Napoléon.

A surer and more glorious title to fame is that of those who are
remembered for some act of justice or self-devotion: the self-sacrifice of
Leonidas, the good faith of Regulus, are the glories of history.

In some cases where men have been called after places, the men are
remembered, while the places are forgotten. When we speak of Palestrina or
Perugino, of Nelson or Wellington, of Newton or Darwin, who remembers the
towns? We think only of the men.

Goethe has been called the soul of his century.

It is true that we have but meagre biographies of Shakespeare or of Plato;
yet how much we know about them.

Statesmen and Generals enjoy great celebrity during their lives. The
newspapers chronicle every word and movement. But the fame of the
Philosopher and Poet is more enduring.

Wordsworth deprecates monuments to Poets, with some exceptions, on this
very account. The case of Statesmen, he says, is different. It is right to
commemorate them because they might otherwise be forgotten; but Poets live
in their books forever.

The real conquerors of the world indeed are not the generals but the
thinkers; not Genghis Khan and Akbar, Rameses, or Alexander, but Confucius
and Buddha, Aristotle, Plato, and Christ. The rulers and kings who reigned
over our ancestors have for the most part long since sunk into
oblivion--they are forgotten for want of some sacred bard to give them
life--or are remembered, like Suddhodana and Pilate, from their
association with higher spirits.

Such men's lives cannot be compressed into any biography. They lived not
merely in their own generation, but for all time. When we speak of the
Elizabethan period we think of Shakespeare and Bacon, Raleigh and Spenser.
The ministers and secretaries of state, with one or two exceptions, we
scarcely remember, and Bacon himself is recollected less as the Judge than
as the Philosopher.

Moreover, to what do Generals and Statesmen owe their fame? They were
celebrated for their deeds, but to the Poet and the Historian they owe
their fame, and to the Poet and Historian we owe their glorious memories
and the example of their virtues.

"Vixere fortes ante Agamemnona
Multi; sed omnes illacrimabiles
Urgentur ignotique longâ
Nocte, carent quia vate sacro."

There were many brave men before Agamemnon, but their memory has perished
because they were celebrated by no divine Bard. Montrose happily combined
the two, when in "My dear and only love" he promises,

"I'll make thee glorious by my pen,
And famous by my sword."

It is remarkable, and encouraging, how many of the greatest men have risen
from the lowest rank, and triumphed over obstacles which might well have
seemed insurmountable; nay, even obscurity itself may be a source of
honor. The very doubts as to Homer's birthplace have contributed to this
glory, seven cities as we all know laying claim to the great poet--

"Smyrna, Chios, Colophon, Salamis, Rhodos, Argos, Athenae."

To take men of Science only. Ray was the son of a blacksmith, Watt of a
shipwright, Franklin of a tallow-chandler, Dalton of a handloom weaver,
Fraünhofer of a glazier, Laplace of a farmer, Linnaeus of a poor curate,
Faraday of a blacksmith, Lamarck of a banker's clerk; Davy was an
apothecary's assistant, Galileo, Kepler, Sprengel, Cuvier, and Sir W.
Herschel were all children of very poor parents.

It is, on the other hand, sad to think how many of our greatest
benefactors are unknown even by name. Who discovered the art of procuring
fire? Prometheus is merely the personification of forethought. Who
invented letters? Cadmus is a mere name.

These inventions, indeed, are lost in the mists of antiquity, but even as
regards recent progress the steps are often so gradual, and so numerous,
that few inventions can be attributed entirely, or even mainly, to any one
person.

Columbus is said, and truly said, to have discovered America, though the
Northmen were there before him.

We Englishmen have every reason to be proud of our fellow-countrymen. To
take Philosophers and men of Science only, Bacon and Hobbes' Locke and
Berkeley, Hume and Hamilton, will always be associated with the progress
of human thought; Newton with gravitation, Adam Smith with Political
Economy, Young with the undulatory theory of light, Herschel with the
discovery of Uranus and the study of the star depths, Lord Worcester,
Trevethick, and Watt with the steam-engine, Wheatstone with the electric
telegraph, Jenner with the banishment of smallpox, Simpson with the
practical application of anaesthetics, and Darwin with the creation of
modern Natural History.

These men, and such as these, have made our history and moulded our
opinions; and though during life they may have occupied, comparatively, an
insignificant space in the eyes of their countrymen, they became at length
an irresistible power, and have now justly grown to a glorious memory.

[1] Tennyson.

[2] Beowulf.

[3] Montrose.

[4] He is referring here to one of his expeditions.

[5] Plutarch.

[6] Emerson.

[7] Sir J. Browne.




CHAPTER II.

WEALTH.


"The rich and poor meet together: the Lord is the maker of
them all."--PROVERBS OF SOLOMON.




CHAPTER II.

WEALTH.


Ambition often takes the form of a love of money. There are many who have
never attempted Art or Music, Poetry or Science; but most people do
something for a livelihood, and consequently an increase of income is not
only acceptable in itself, but gives a pleasant feeling of success.

Doubt is often expressed whether wealth is any advantage. I do not myself
believe that those who are born, as the saying is, with a silver spoon in
their mouth, are necessarily any the happier for it. No doubt wealth
entails almost more labor than poverty, and certainly more anxiety. Still
it must, I think, be confessed that the possession of an income, whatever
it may be, which increases somewhat as the years roll on, does add to the
comfort of life.

Unquestionably the possession of wealth is by no means unattended by
drawbacks. Money and the love of money often go together. The poor man, as
Emerson says, is the man who wishes to be rich; and the more a man has,
the more he often longs to be richer. Just as drinking often does but
increase thirst; so in many cases the craving for riches does grow with
wealth.

This is, of course, especially the case when money is sought for its own
sake. Moreover, it is often easier to make money than to keep or to enjoy
it. Keeping it is dull and anxious drudgery. The dread of loss may hang
like a dark cloud over life. Apicius, when he squandered most of his
patrimony, but had still 250,000 crowns left, committed suicide, as Seneca
tells us, for fear he should die of hunger.

Wealth is certainly no sinecure. Moreover, the value of money depends
partly on knowing what to do with it, partly on the manner in which it is
acquired.

"Acquire money, thy friends say, that we also may have some. If I can
acquire money and also keep myself modest, and faithful, and magnanimous,
point out the way, and I will acquire it. But if you ask me to love the
things which are good and my own, in order that you may gain things that
are not good, see how unfair and unwise you are. For which would you
rather have? Money, or a faithful and modest friend....

"What hinders a man, who has clearly comprehended these things, from
living with a light heart, and bearing easily the reins, quietly expecting
everything which can happen, and enduring that which has already happened?
Would you have me to bear poverty? Come, and you will know what poverty is
when it has found one who can act well the part of a poor man." [1]

We must bear in mind Solon's answer to Croesus, "Sir, if any other come
that hath better iron than you, he will be master of all this gold."

Midas is another case in point. He prayed that everything he touched might
be turned into gold, and this prayer was granted. His wine turned to gold,
his bread turned to gold, his clothes, his very bed.

"Attonitus novitate mali, divesque miserque,
Effugere optat opes, et quae modo voverat, odit."

He is by no means the only man who has suffered from too much gold.

The real truth I take to be that wealth is not necessarily an advantage,
but that whether it is so or not depends on the use we make of it. The
same, however, might be said of most other opportunities and privileges;
Knowledge and Strength, Beauty and Skill, may all be abused; if we neglect
or misuse them we are worse off than if we had never had them. Wealth is
only a disadvantage in the hands of those who do not know how to use it.
It gives the command of so many other things--leisure, the power of
helping friends, books, works of art, opportunities and means of travel.

It would, however, be easy to exaggerate the advantages of money. It is
well worth having, and worth working for, but it does not requite too
great a sacrifice; not indeed so great as is often offered up to it. A
wise proverb tells us that gold may be bought too dear. If wealth is to be
valued because it gives leisure, clearly it would be a mistake to
sacrifice leisure in the struggle for wealth. Money has no doubt also a
tendency to make men poor in spirit. But, on the other hand, what gift is
there which is without danger?

Euripides said that money finds friends for men, and has great (he said
the greatest) power among Mankind, cynically adding, "A mighty person
indeed is a rich man, especially if his heir be unknown."

Bossuet tells us that "he had no attachment to riches, still if he had
only what was barely necessary, he felt himself narrowed, and would lose
more than half his talents."

Shelley was certainly not an avaricious man, and yet "I desire money," he
said, "because I think I know the use of it. It commands labor, it gives
leisure; and to give leisure to those who will employ it in the forwarding
of truth is the noblest present an individual can make to the whole."

Many will have felt with Pepys when he quaintly and piously says, "Abroad
with my wife, the first time that ever I rode in my own coach; which do
make my heart rejoice and praise God, and pray him to bless it to me, and
continue it."

This, indeed, was a somewhat selfish satisfaction. Yet the merchant need
not quit nor be ashamed of his profession, bearing in mind only the
inscription on the Church of St. Giacomo de Rialto at Venice: "Around this
temple let the merchant's law be just, his weight true, and his covenants
faithful." [2]

If life has been sacrificed to the rolling up of money for its own sake,
the very means by which it was acquired will prevent its being enjoyed;
the chill of poverty will have entered into the very bones. The term Miser
was happily chosen for such persons; they are essentially miserable.

"A collector peeps into all the picture shops of Europe for a landscape of
Poussin, a crayon sketch of Salvator; but the Transfiguration, the Last
Judgment, the Communion of St. Jerome, and what are as transcendent as
these, are on the walls of the Vatican, the Uffizi, or the Louvre, where
every footman may see them: to say nothing of Nature's pictures in every
street, of sunsets and sunrises every day, and the sculpture of the human
body never absent. A collector recently bought at public auction in
London, for one hundred and fifty-seven guineas, an autograph of
Shakespeare: but for nothing a schoolboy can read Hamlet, and can detect
secrets of highest concernment yet unpublished therein." [3] And yet
"What hath the owner but the sight of it with his eyes." [4]

We are really richer than we think. We often hear of Earth hunger. People
envy a great Landlord, and fancy how delightful it must be to possess a
large estate. But, as Emerson says, "if you own land, the land owns you."
Moreover, have we not all, in a better sense--have we not all thousands of
acres of our own? The commons, and roads, and footpaths, and the seashore,
our grand and varied coast--these are all ours. The sea-coast has,
moreover, two great advantages. In the first place, it is for the most
part but little interfered with by man, and in the second it exhibits most
instructively the forces of Nature. We are all great landed proprietors,
if we only knew it. What we lack is not land, but the power to enjoy it.
Moreover, this great inheritance has the additional advantage that it
entails no labor, requires no management. The landlord has the trouble,
but the landscape belongs to every one who has eyes to see it. Thus
Kingsley called the heaths round Eversley his "winter garden;" not because
they were his in the eye of the law, but in that higher sense in which ten
thousand persons may own the same thing.

[1] Epictetus.

[2] Ruskin.

[3] Emerson.

[4] Solomon.




CHAPTER III.

HEALTH.


"Health is best for mortal man; next beauty; thirdly, well gotten
wealth; fourthly, the pleasures of youth among friends."

SIMONIDES.




CHAPTER III

HEALTH.


But if there has been some difference of opinion as to the advantage of
wealth, with reference to health all are agreed.

"Health," said Simonides long ago, "is best for mortal man; next beauty;
thirdly, well gotten wealth; fourthly, the pleasure of youth among
friends." "Life," says Longfellow, "without health is a burden, with
health is a joy and gladness." Empedocles delivered the people of Selinus
from a pestilence by draining a marsh, and was hailed as a Demigod. We are
told that a coin was struck in his honor, representing the Philosopher in
the act of staying the hand of Phoebus.

We scarcely realize, I think, how much we owe to Doctors. Our system of
Medicine seems so natural and obvious that it hardly occurs to us as
somewhat new and exceptional. When we are ill we send for a Physician; he
prescribes some medicine; we take it, and pay his fee. But among the lower
races of men pain and illness are often attributed to the presence of evil
spirits. The Medicine Man is a Priest, or rather a Sorcerer, more than a
true Doctor, and his effort is to exorcise the evil spirit.

In other countries where some advance has been made, a charm is written on
a board, washed off, and drunk. In some cases the medicine is taken, not
by the patient, but by the Doctor. Such a system, however, is generally
transient; it is naturally discouraged by the Profession, and is indeed
incompatible with a large practice. Even as regards the payment we find
very different systems. The Chinese pay their medical man as long as they
are well, and stop his salary as soon as they are ill. In ancient Egypt we
are told that the patient feed the Doctor for the first few days, after
which the Doctor paid the patient until he made him well. This is a
fascinating system, but might afford too much temptation to heroic
remedies.

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